River Karma

The crew, (left to right) Ben Marr, Steve Fisher, Rush Sturges, Tyler Bradt, Dan
Campbell (cinematographer, backup kayaker--he had a Riot Guide with him.
Bottom now (right to left) Greg Von Dorsten (photographer with him). Jared
Meehan (cinematographer), Pete Meredith (“Eye in the Sky”), Jamie Roberts (pilot).
Finding a rhythm in their river running, the team got better
at predicting what the Congo might do next. But harnessing its
wild surges to narrowly avoid lethal holes and whirlpools led
to plenty of close calls. On day three, while negotiating a
particularly treacherous rapid dubbed the Mopane Worm (its
narrow flow undulates like the back of an indigenous worm
many locals eat) both Sturges and Marr struggled to escape the
river’s clutches. Seconds from being flushed into a rapid they
likely would not have survived, both sprinted for dry land.
Sturges landed on the right bank, while Marr stranded himself
precariously on a tiny islet where the helicopter had to pull off
a daring rescue.
By morning day four, Fisher’s team had only a pair of rapids to
go, two of the largest and most technically difficult on the river.
Stacked back-to-back they essentially merge into a single
continuous rapid – the Cauldron of hell, the same one that
stopped Cao and undoubtedly harassed past explorers like
Tuckey as they attempted to head upriver.
During the paddlers’ approach to the Cauldron of Hell, Fisher
and Sturges threaded a tight line between a set of whirlpools
and a spot where the Congo’s entire flow detonates against
soaring 200-foot cliffs. Safely past, they sprinted right to avoid
being pushed into the final section of whitewater. “As we were
peeling into the eddy, I caught Fisher out of the corner of my
eye, disappearing into a massive whirlpool,” says Sturges. “All I
could see was his face disappearing into the darkness.”
Fisher was trapped – upside-down, again augured beneath
the surface. Sturges watched the spiraling hole, hoping for a
glimpse of his friend reaching the surface. Then, without warning,
a second whirlpool snatched Sturges. Fifty feet apart, the two
whirlpools had converged, spinning in opposite directions. A
double-barreled whirlpool. Suddenly Sturges was fighting for
his own life.
Watching from above, the kayaks looked like toy boats being
sucked down a pair of drains. The helicopter team was powerless.
Nothing could be done to save them.
Eventually Sturges was spat free while Fisher was fed into
two more whirlpools before finally being released. Rattled, they
rejoined the others and together managed a conservative, yet
rowdy, line down the right side of the final rapid.
Hooting and howling the team slide, one by one, safely into
an eddy at the bottom of the Inga Rapids. “I was actually in
tears in my kayak,” says Fisher. “Not only because we’d crossed
the finish line of running these rapids and all surviving it… just
an immense sense of relief that the whole thing was over.”
The team had accomplished the first descent and effectively
connected the dots of the unfinished source-to-sea path first
attempted by their fellow explorers some 200 years earlier.
Instead of feeling like we’d succeeded where others hadn’t, we left feeling humbled and that we had simply been
fortunate to pass through unscathed. When the early explorers wrote that these rapids are unnavigable, and that
any attempt on them would be pure insanity, they were dead right,” says Fisher. “We may have succeeded, but their
statements are still accurate. In fact, we all agreed that if we attempted them again, we wouldn’t fancy our chances.
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